City to vote on pension plan for aging Memphis sanitation workers

August 19, 2013 — Sanitation worker Ned Wilson, 69, catches a trash bin that as it comes loose from the lift on his truck while collecting on his route in East Memphis. Wilson started working for the city’s sanitation services on July 10, 1970 when he was 26 years old and now has 43 years of service under his belt. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal)

The Commercial Appeal

August 19, 2013 — Sanitation worker Ned Wilson, 69, hauls some garbage bags to his truck while collecting on his route in East Memphis. Wilson started working for the city’s sanitation services on July 10, 1970 when he was 26 years old and now has 43 years of service under his belt. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal)

The Commercial Appeal

August 19, 2013 — Sanitation worker Ned Wilson, 69, shakes hands with a man who approached his truck while driving his route in East Memphis. Wilson started working for the city’s sanitation services on July 10, 1970 when he was 26 years old and now has 43 years of service under his belt. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal)

The Commercial Appeal

One principle has guided Ned Wilson through 43 years of hot or cold or soggy days working for the Memphis Department of Solid Waste Management: "I don't complain about nothing."

"I love to work and it keeps me going," said Wilson, 69, a white fedora hat topping his work clothes as he drove his garbage-collection route Monday in the Cottonwood neighborhood close to Perkins and American Way.

He's one of 27 Solid Waste Management employees who are 65 or older — the oldest, at 82, is Elmore Nickelberry — and one of 65 employees in the division with 30 or more years of city employment.

One reason so many continue to work well past typical retirement age is that there is no city pension for workers in the solid waste department.

The Memphis City Council will take a final vote Tuesday on a plan to rectify the situation. Under the terms of a deal negotiated between AFSCME and Mayor A C Wharton's administration, the union will get a retirement fund and the city will get about $4.7 million in annual savings by cutting 80 waste-management positions through attrition and asking the remaining crews to make about 100 more stops per day.

Wilson said he can make about 600 stops in the "one-armed bandit," the automated truck he's driven the last nine years, but it was in the shop Monday. Instead, he drove a rear-loaded Freightliner that was bigger than an elephant, with co-workers Joshua Moore and Clyde Holt working at the back.

Wilson said he's seen colleagues retire, run out of money and ask for their old jobs back but be denied. So he'd rather just keep working, he said.

"You get out there and retire and quit your job, and then you realize you have to get another job."

After Memphis sanitation workers staged a strike and won a city contract in 1968, they affiliated with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and voted to opt out of the city's pension system and rely on Social Security.

The retirement plan the council will vote on Tuesday would give sanitation workers $400 for every year of service up to 30 years, for a maximum annual benefit of $12,000. AFSCME and Wharton-adminstration officials brought the plan to a special council committee meeting last week.

Council member Myron Lowery called the agreement between the two "historic."

"For employees who are 80 years old and above to be able to retire is wonderful," Lowery said in the meeting. "I want them to retire as soon as possible."

If the council approves the package, it may take 90 days to prepare the retirement plans for the older workers, said the city's chief administrative officer George Little.

Ned Wilson said Monday he had not heard about a new retirement deal but would take it "if there's some money involved in it." He's saved money, and now draws from Social Security.

He did not complain that he wasn't part of the city pension fund. But he welcomed the idea of retirement.

"I'm not going to just sit around," he said staring out the windshield. "I'll be jogging or riding my bike, but I don't think I want no more work."

The new plan would bring monthly solid-waste fees for Memphis residents back up by $2.25 to $25.05 per month.

In addition to providing the retirement fund, the addition to the fee will allow the city to replace about 60 vehicles or other pieces of equipment and buy 40,000 recycling containers, at $45 each, that are much like the wheeled containers Memphians now use for garbage.